Do Life Right

Few of these came out in 2007, and many are underrated by critics and reviewers. That doesn’t stop us from forming our own opinions as to the best movies and television shows we’ve seen this year. If your family and friends don’t have these, consider them for presents this upcoming Holiday season. Again, these lists aren’t in a particular order.

Top 10 Favorite “Family Friendly” Movies we viewed in 2007:

1. Meet the Robinsons; This is a must have family movie! Quirky, delightful, and it has a great Unschooly message that we quote all the time, “Keep Moving Forward.“
2. Just Like Heaven; Definitely an underrated movie. I love romantic comedies, so I don’t know how I never heard about this one when it came out. It’s very sweet.
3. Joe Versus the Volcano; I’ve talked about this underrated Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan classic before. If you are in anyway unsatisfied with your life, then this is the movie to inspire you. I just wish they had a soundtrack; the music is great!
4. The Incredibles; I think this might be our favorite Pixar movie. The family is a real team, and it is sweet, yet full of action and adventure. We hope they come out with a sequel. My daughters never tire of wearing their Incredibles pajamas and pretending to be Violet and Dash.
5. Curious George; This family friendly (thoroughly enjoyed by all ages) movie is fun and very Unschooly. This was our #1 favorite movie of last year (2006) — hand’s down.
6. The Jungle Book; The classic re-released! If there is any Disney movie that we know the words of every song, this is it.
7. Groundhog Day; We watch this Bill Murray classic every year on February 2nd. Our year wouldn’t be the same without it.
8. Notting Hill; Another oft-forgotten romantic comedy. I also love the soundtrack.
9. The Wild Thornberrys Movie; Not being a Rugrats fan, I was surprised at how great this movie was. If you are looking for a good family movie to add to your collection, this is it. I adore Paul Simon’s song, Father & Daughter, that is featured in this movie’s soundtrack (it reminds me of my husband’s close relationships with our daughters).
10. The Harry Potter Movies; These have had such a great influence on our lives that I would be remiss to not mention them. We even celebrated my daughter’s 11th birthday by having a “Welcome to Magic School” party based on the first Harry Potter book/movie.

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We rarely go to the movie theater since we have our own theater at home (plus for the cost of the four of us going to a matinee, we could buy two brand new DVDs). With a front projection television, we get the full movie theater effect without needing to go anywhere. Our projector television set up cost signifantly less than other popular home theater systems that are only half the screen size as ours. The large up-high screen is great for a family with active children that love to dance around during movies. My husband especially enjoys the rare treat of being alone and turning off all the lights and turning the volume up to watch a movie the rest of us wouldn’t enjoy (so we leave him alone to do this about once a month). I wrote about projection theaters in my post “Bigger Screen, Happier Budget, More Space: Projector Televisions“. Here are my husband’s favorite movies of 2007 (with all comments from him for the rest of this section).

This is my top 10 list of movies for the man of the house. These are great movies (both old and recent) with action, adventure, drama and humor. For one reason or another though, they might not be appreciated by the whole family. Here they are in no particular order:
Top 10 Favorite “Guy” Movies we viewed in 2007:

1. The Great Escape; A great war movie that shows what determined people can accomplish by chipping away a bit at a time (or a pocketful of dirt at a time). Plus there’s the iconic scene of Steve McQueen riding his motorcycle. [Trivia note: that’s the same motorcycle later used by the Fonz on Happy Days.] Another great example of this genre is The Bridge on the River Kwai.
2. Highlander; What would you do if you had hundreds of years to live? Where would you go? What would you learn? What would you accomplish? How would your outlook on the world change? Even if you ignore the deeper questions raised by this movie, there’s still lots of cool swordfighting and a cool soundtrack from Queen.
3. Escape From New York/Escape From L.A.; Definitely not sophisticated, high culture entertainment, but a lot of fun. Kurt Russell is great as anti-hero Snake Plissken. Again, lots of action and some slightly guilty pleasure rooting for someone a little less than perfect.
4. Casino Royale; What guy movie list would be complete without mentioning James Bond? Daniel Craig makes a gritty, man’s man Bond. It’s good to see 007 getting back to his roots in this latest installment. There’s less reliance on gadgets and deus-ex-machina plot devices and more realistic spy drama.
5. Lethal Weapon; Probably the best of the “buddy cop” genre. Plenty of “shoot ‘em up” action and Mel Gibson acting wonderfully insane. Your wife probably won’t understand what he sees in the Three Stooges.
6. The Magnificent Seven; A guy’s movie list needs a western. Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn - you’ve got your choice of heroes to root for here. I love the scene with James Coburn in a knife versus gun duel. This movie is actually a remake of Akira Kurasawa’s Seven Samarai - also a great movie, but the American version is a bit easier to relate to. The story is so popular that it’s been remade numerous times, forming the core plot to The Three Amigos, A Bug’s Life, and Battle Beyond the Stars. The movie also has the catchy, inspiring theme music going for it; you’ll probably be humming it the next day.
7. The Maltese Falcon; My film noir entry. You can’t go wrong with Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Goldstreet, and Peter Lorre. To be honest, the plot here is less important than the overall feel of film. This is Bogie being Bogie.
8. Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan; This is the best of the Star Trek series. The Voyage Home and First Contact are great too, but this one still tops the list. It’s what the first movie should have been. You have a strong charismatic villain, exciting battles, and some classic hacker tricks (reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru simulator and using the Reliant’s default password). Spock gets to be noble, heroic, and of course logical in his sacrifice. It’s also inspiring to see Kirk realize that there’s no such thing as being too old when you’re following “your first, best destiny”.
9. Raiders of the Lost Ark; Pulp fiction done with a big enough budget to pull it off as believable. Indy is everything you could want to be: an intellectual, an adventurer, a lady’s man, a hero. This movie starts bold and exciting and keeps the pace all the way through. Indy’s scene with the swordsman is classic.
10. Dune; An epic science fiction story, but don’t expect it to match the book. (You can also forget about the Sci-Fi channel mini-series — way too boring.) You get a captivating rugged world, stoic Fremen warriors, awe-inspiring sandworms, and a godlike messiah. When my oldest daughter was born, she had eyes that looked exactly like a Fremen’s.

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Top 10 Favorite Television Shows we viewed in 2007:

1. Monk; We love Mr. Monk. We empathize with him. My oldest daughter feels like she understands him so well that she has started a Vision Board for him. It’s an ongoing project that we just might have to send to Monk’s writers some day.
2. Psych; Shawn Spencer is a comic genius. He might not be a psychic, but he sure can get the job done (with Gus’s help). I laugh so hard whenever I watch this show! My favorite character is definitely Gus.
3. Star Trek: The Next Generation; I’ve written before that we jokingly say that Star Trek is our children’s homeschooling curriculum (we’re Unschoolers, so we don’t use any curriculum). Seriously, if you can watch an entire season of this show (we’ve now officially watched the entire series — seven seasons — it took us about two years) and not delve into every school topic imaginable (and MUCH MUCH MORE), I don’t know if you were awake. These shows, while not entirely scientifically accurate, are deep and compelling and give us thousands of hours of conversations.
4. Magic School Bus; This has got to be the world’s best kid’s television show. We record these daily and my youngest daughter never gets tired of them. If you have the good fortune to get them on DVD or VHS, you’ll find a bonus section at the end of each episode that explains a bit of the “real” science behind the topic of that episode. Many libraries have copies.
5. Kyle XY; This show is teen and adult drama with science fiction, rolled up into one. It’s not campy, nor about space aliens (although I’m not opposed so some good space aliens!). It is, however, interesting and compelling. It’s not scary to my kids, like some sci-fi shows can be.
6. Heroes;We love this show. The formatting is similar to a comic book. We eat our homemade “Heroes Popcorn” invention when we watch this show (airpopped popcorn with nuggets of fruit mixed in). This is one of the few shows that we have to watch right away, and not save up several to view all at once. With the invention of DVD-Recorders (with hard drives that allow you to edit shows), we never watch anything live.
7. Dr. Who; My husband has been a Dr. Who fan since he was a child. After meeting him, I soon became a fan, too. While our older daughter has highly enjoyed Dr. Who novels, she never got into the old show (the one with all the cheesy special effects). The new show, however, is topnotch in the special effects department and the story lines are quite good, too. I don’t want to give any spoilers. However, this show can get scary or at least intense at times. Know this beforehand — I’ve had to look away.
8. The Universe; My friend, Liz, introduced us to this show (Thanks!). With my children’s love of space this past year, they’ve highly enjoyed this show. We’ve kept all the recorded episodes so they can view them at their leisure. The commentator gets a little bold in his voice sometimes, and we love mimicking him. In fact, my youngest daughter quoted him during a Star Trek: DS9 episode we were watching earlier this week. He’s hilarious. This show is nonfiction and imparts up-to-date knowledge about space and, well, the universe. If you like this show, you’ll probably like NOVA, also (another favorite of ours).
9. Jeopardy!; This is another show that we record daily. There’s nothing like a quick witted quiz show to entertain.
10. Veronica Mars; We cannot fathom why this fantastic show was cancelled. I think it is because no one knew about it. Whenever I mention this show to people, they usually say, “Huh?” It was highly underrated and I hope their DVD sales do fantastic. Maybe they’ll bring it back? The actors all seem to be doing well on new shows now, so I doubt this will happen, but it certainly would be great! I also love the fact that Kristen Bell, Veronica Mars herself, is a vegetarian!

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Regarding parental censorship of movies and television shows: As Radical Unschoolers, we do not censor our children’s viewing of anything, nor do we limit the amount of time they watch television. We, like all Unschoolers discover, see that knowing our children so well enables us to know if a child of ours will be able to handle (and enjoy!) certain topics. My children, my husband, and myself all have various issues with certain (different for each of us) topics that are in movies and television shows. If any of us are concerned that another of us may have issues with something we want to view, we TALK about it. Sometimes that means that one of us watches something alone. Sometimes it means we don’t watch it at all. We are all highly respectful of each other, and it has never been an issue for any of us. When in doubt about a movie’s content, we check out Kids-In-Mind.Our children, also, are not (nor have they ever been) “glued” to the screen, as many anti-Unschoolers predict would happen when controls are let-up. The “gluing” effect only occurs in people that have been deprived and limited. My children know that they can walk away from the television at any time and still be able to view what was playing later (if desired). They also have the option to watch television or movies whenever they want.

In reality, we can go days sometimes without turning on the TV at all. Then, when we have a bunch of shows recorded that we are looking forward to seeing, we might watch them all in one stretch. It is wonderful fun! A single television show can sometimes take us hours (even days, occasionally) to view in its entirety, due to the fact that we talk about the show while it happens. We pause, we google topics and look up characters and actors, we contemplate, we stop it and view older shows first, etc. In our house, television is a very active activity. We aren’t passive couch potatoes — we’ve no reason to be.

One thing I see time and time again in children that are limited on television is the inability to walk away from bad television. When a child is told they can only watch one movie a week (and it is predetermined), or 30 minutes of television a day, then you better believe that they’ll get it all even if they don’t like it (plus they often aren’t discerning enough to make an opinion about whether they like a program or not).

We’ve never had this issue with our children. If they don’t like something, they walk away. Being discerning has also made us realize how wonderful television shows on DVD are. No commercials to wade through, no discontinuous scenes. When possible, this is the only way we’ll watch most shows (we’re highly selective and proud of it!). Here are a few links on Unschooling and Television/Movies:

• Sandra Dodd’s “Value and Uses of TV and Video for Unschoolers“
• Joyfully Rejoycing “Letting go of the TV controls“
• Dayna Martin’s “Why Unschoolers Rise Above Anti-TV Elitism“